


hold on, ready or not

by disarm_d



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Pining, someone save me from these children and these children from themselves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 22:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9205235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disarm_d/pseuds/disarm_d
Summary: Mitch was so used to being friends with guys on all the teams he'd ever played on that it took him all the way until November to realize that he didn’t like Auston the way he liked all the other guys he was friends with.In which Mitch makes a dreamboard.





	

**Author's Note:**

> If you are being a very kind friend and reading this even though you don't know who the players are, I have [made you a primer](http://disarmd.tumblr.com/post/155417913450/hey-guys-so-i-did-write-another-hockey-story). 
> 
> I don't deserve [threeturn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/threeturn) and that's just a fact but every minute I still have her, I am very grateful indeed. Thanks for the beta, bb.

Babcock was yelling at the d, so Mitch spat out his mouth guard and leaned against Auston. Auston held up his weight for a moment and then started leaning backwards. Mitch followed after him, nearly took both of them down, before standing up again. 

“When do you think I’ll score a hat trick?” he asked. 

Auston shrugged. “Why?”

“I’m just trying to sort out my dreamboard,” Mitch said.

“I will pay you twenty dollars to actually make a dreamboard.” Auston had his stick upright, and was resting his chin on his hands, which were clasped over the end of his stick. He chewed on the finger of his glove a little bit. 

“U.S. dollars,” Mitch said. 

“No, stop asking me to give you American money. I get paid in Canadian dollars just like you do.”

“Maybe you could borrow it from your parents.” Mitch looked down the ice. It sounded like Babcock was just chanting _fuck, fuck, fuck_ at the top of his lungs. 

“What do you even want to do with U.S. money?”

“Buy something for the half price it would be on Amazon dot ca from the dot com website.”

“Like a book?”

“Maybe,” Mitch said. “Give me the money and find out.”

“Do you know, I’ve never seen you read a book.”

“No one reads books,” Mitch said. “I was thinking a bookshelf would look good in my living room.” That was his new year’s resolution: to make his condo more of a sweet place to live. Like it was already pretty sweet, obviously, but he didn’t have anything hanging on the walls, or any rugs, or, like, cutting boards or measuring cups. 

“Instead of the TV?”

“Ha, ha, hilarious. Obviously not.”

“Where would you even put it? All the rest of the walls are windows.”

“Like a low one, you know, under the TV.”

“Hmm,” Auston said. He didn’t actually make any sounds, so it was more of a metaphysical _hmm_. He communicated mostly with his posture and not really with his words -- or even his eyebrows -- at all. Once Mitch sat beside him in the change room and waited to see how long it would take for Auston to say something if he didn’t speak first. Mitch never got an answer to that because like three different people started chatting with him in the time he was waiting and then _Don’t Wanna Know_ started playing and he had to moonwalk across the change room and in the end he forgot that he was meant to be keeping time. 

“You don’t think that would look good?” Mitch asked. Auston’s place had come already furnished, so it’s not like he had any decorating experience.

“Boys,” Morgan said. “Do you think you want to join us for practice or do you actually want to leave the team to become interior designers?”

Auston skated over quickly, while Mitch followed more slowly. 

“I can be both,” Mitch said, while he skated past Morgan. “Don’t try to limit my potential.”

“I would never,” Morgan said, and patted him on the ass.

\--

Mitch was so used to being friends with guys on all the teams he’d ever played on that it took him all the way until November to realize that he didn’t like Auston the way he liked all the other guys he was friends with. 

Mitch had been driving them to practice. They were stuck in right where the QEW turned into the Gardiner. Mitch had to drive all the way from downtown to Auston’s place in Mississauga (because he wanted to live near the airport and their practice rink like a loser instead of downtown with Mitch) and then back to Etobicoke. If he didn’t pick up Auston, he could drive straight to the rink instead of doubling back. That was mostly against the flow of traffic. Why was he spending all this extra time sitting bumper to bumper? He should just tell Auston to drive himself. But the second the thought crossed his mind, he immediately knew he would never tell Auston to drive himself to practice. He liked having Auston in the car with him. He liked having Auston sitting beside him more than he disliked traffic. He, like, _liked_ Auston. 

Luckily Auston had been zoned out, like he usually was in the morning, and he missed Mitch’s entire revelation. 

\--

They played even more back to backs and then finally they were back in Toronto for a little bit. Mitch had a whole day to himself. For a moment, he was worried he would actually get bored, but then he remembered that stupid half bet Auston had made him at the beginning of the month. 

Where did a person even get art supplies? He wasn’t sure, so he went to the Crappy Tire by Dundas Square because that was his go-to. They had normal glue and glue guns and next-level glue guns that you could like build a whole house with. He bought the midlevel glue gun because that seemed appropriate. 

He didn’t know what kind of board dreamboards were made of, which was funny because board was right there in the word for what they were. He spent some time in the drywall section, which didn’t feel right. He walked through tools and thought about how good it would feel just to buy all of them, like one of every single kind of tool, even though he didn’t have any use for them. If his condo had more storage space -- or realistically, like _any_ storage space at all -- he would set up a sweetass tool kit, like his dad had, but for now he just made do with that little IKEA starter set his mom had bought for him when he had first moved out. 

No one looked at him as he made his way through the aisles, except this one woman who gave him a kind of pointed up and down. He would have been like, _Hey_ , except it was pretty obvious that she was just checking to see if he worked there, and he did not. He walked through the cleaning section and paused to smell every single bottle of the Method all-purpose cleaners. They all smelled pretty good. He grabbed the clementine, cucumber, and pink grapefruit bottles. He also needed laundry detergent, and his hands were pretty full, so he put back the cucumber one, then changed his mind and returned the clementine instead. He got the fresh air detergent. 

Then he checked out and walked almost all the way out of the store before he realized that he still didn’t have the damn board for his dreamboard. 

“I have to get something else,” he told the employee who was standing at the entrance handing out flyers. The guy did not care. No one checked his bags when he left the store for the second time. He could have shoplifted some dish soap as well, but it hadn’t seemed worth it because usually he ate out, so he didn’t have to do dishes that often. 

It was a lot to carry home. When Mitch got back, he realized he had no printed material to affix to the board. He needed, like, pictures. Magazine clippings. He obviously hadn’t bought a magazine in his entire life, and had no printed pictures because instagram existed. 

So he ordered a colour printer off Amazon, and paid for next day shipping like a baller. 

And _then_ he got bored. He texted Connor the clown and the cowboy man emojis, because ever since the update, he had been trying to use every single one of the new emojis. The new dancing girl had gotten fancy. She was his favorite. 

Connor didn’t reply, but Dylan did. _Connor doesn’t know what your text means._

Mitch: _So he asked you to ask me?_

Dylan: _No he just asked me if i knew._

Mitch: _Tell him it means i think Carey price is a clown_.

Dylan: _Rude._

But obviously he relayed the message, because Connor texted back almost immediately with the explosive angry head emoji.

Mitch: _Tell me again about how you sucked his dick during worlds?_

Connor: _I said i MET HIM_

Connor: _Not the other thing_.

And then, from Dylan again: _Stop riling him up_.

Mitch: _What did you think was going to happen?_

Dylan sent back the angel emoji. 

Mitch replied to both him and Connor with the eggplant emoji and then went to see what was left in his freezer for dinner. While he waited for the chili to heat in the microwave, he thought about texting Auston. The problem was that Auston was really bad at texting. Like specifically because he didn’t usually write back, or if he did, it was at a weird time that made it impossible to get a back-and-forth going. 

Mitch had asked him about it, because he’d _seen_ Auston texting plenty of times, and Auston had said it was because he knew he’d see Mitch again soon but he wasn’t going to be seeing his friends for a long time. It was sort of nice and not nice to hear, like most of the things that Auston said. 

Mitch decided to send him a snap instead. He stood with his back to the refrigerator because it made a pretty good solid background and then he took a selfie with his face just neutral. His mom ragged on him constantly for taking so many selfies, but it was the best way Mitch knew to be like, _I’m here, show me you’re here too._

Auston didn’t snap him back until Mitch was already in bed, just checking his phone one last time before he plugged it in to charge. Auston was in bed too, apparently: the photo was darker on one side than the other, like only the bedside lamp was on. It cast weird shadows across Auston’s face. He was shirtless, and the angle of the picture was wide enough that Mitch could see his collarbones. Auston had written, _See you tomorrow_ , which was kind of like the thing that he would say if he were in Mitch’s bed. Both of them falling asleep together. Like, goodnight, see you tomorrow, I’m here now and I’ll be here always and jesus christ Mitch needed to fall asleep, his brain sure turned into a steaming pile of rotten garbage when he was left alone in the dark. 

He plugged his phone in. This was why it was good to send photos by snap instead of text: no temptation to look at the ones he got back over and over again.

\--

The next day, fucking Amazon left a delivery notice instead of leaving his printer by his door. What actually was the point of Amazon if he had to go pick things up? He could have just gone to the printer store in the first place.

The printer that Mitch selected was able to print in black and white as well as colour, and also photocopy and scan, which seemed like a really great deal. The only downside was that it fully weighed like forty to eighty pounds and was so big he couldn’t see around it. No one held the door open for him when he left Canada Post and he almost dislocated his elbow trying to get outside. 

By the time he got it home, he was too tired -- theoretically from practice that morning, but in honesty it was mostly from carrying the damn printer, so he didn’t bother to set it up. He considered the possibility that he had taken a throwaway joke too far, but it seemed like it was way too late to backtrack now. 

He wished Auston didn’t live so far away so he could just be like, Hey, want to come over and help me set up my printer? And then maybe they could lie down on the floor together and touch tongues. Mitch still hadn’t bought a rug, so the floors were a bare, hardwood-like laminate. They looked fine and didn’t show the dirt except for all the salt, now that it was winter. It would be more comfortable to get close like that to Auston in Mitch’s bed, but that seemed unrealistic. If they were just lying on the floor it would be like a weird normal thing. They did weird normal stuff all the time, like when they wore their hats and trench coats. Just another weird normal thing that made everyone say, _Oh, those two_. Nothing that was a big deal. Nothing that screwed things up. 

Mitch really didn’t want to screw anything up. 

He also just really wanted to touch tongues with Auston. 

\--

They played a home game and lost. Auston was quiet in the car in that stupid stoic way of his. 

“Do you think any city hates their hometown team more than Toronto hates us?” Mitch asked. 

“No,” Auston said. “Maybe Montreal.”

“Not this year.”

“No.”

“No,” Mitch echoed. They were backed up in traffic to get onto the highway. “Do you have to get home right away?” 

Auston shook his head, so Mitch took the opposite exit and drove them to the Humber Bay Arch Bridge. Even though it was cold and dark, the pathway along the water was still totally jammed with joggers and bikers and families walking across both lanes and clogging everything up, because everyone in Toronto was crazy. Mitch took Auston away from the bridge and then looped back to walk over it. 

Auston crouched to take a picture of the padlocks people had left on the guardrails. Mitch leaned against the rail and looked first out into the water, which was boring and dark, and then back toward the city. There was some janky marshland between the bridge and the highway that was more interesting than the actual lake. Mitch looked down at Auston, who was staring at his phone. 

“Doesn’t work with the flash,” Auston said.

“It’s just a ripoff of that bridge in Paris.”

“I’m appreciating your country, Mitchell.” 

He stood up, and Mitch leaned against him. He kept touching Auston automatically, like he’d do with any of his friends, and then remembering that he was actually super angsty about getting to touch Auston for real. Whatever. He put his arm around Auston’s waist. 

“Ouch,” Auston said, without flinching.

“You bruised?”

“Guess so. But this is basically the same as an ice bath anyway.”

Mitch patted his side. Now would be the time that he’d slide in to grab Auston’s hand instead, and then they’d walk back to the car, and go home, and he could put his face over all the places that Auston was sore. 

But Mitch just put his hands back in his own pockets as they walked back to the car. Rookies being buds with rookies, just the same weird normal stuff. 

\--

Morgan came over to play video games and saw the printer, still boxed, on Mitch’s floor. 

“What the hell is that?”

“Printer,” Mitch said. 

“Yeah, I can see that… what do you need a printer for?”

Mitch shrugged. “Just getting settled in.”

Morgan looked around pointed. “And you thought what this place was missing most was a _printer_?”

“Want to help me set it up?” Mitch asked.

“I mean, might as well.”

It turned out that the printer was ridiculously easy to set up, except that they had to find the code for Mitch’s wifi because he’d never changed it from the factory setting of meaningless letters and numbers. 

“I’m using this too,” Morgan said when they finally found the paper, which was under the divider thing in Mitch’s cutlery drawer. 

“Don’t download anything.”

“I’m going to stream all three of the Lord of the Rings movies,” Morgan said as he entered the passcode. 

And then they put in the cartridges and the printer calibrated and that was done except for cleaning up the massive amount of packaging that was now strewn across Mitch’s floor. Morgan actually helped him carry the flattened boxes down to the recycle bin in the underground, so Mitch said, “Thanks. That was actually a lot easier with two people.”

“Happy to help. I’ve always hoped you would see me as a father figure,” Morgan said. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“Anything else I can help you with? The girls and the bees? The world and the trees?”

“I’d really like some help with a tree,” Mitch said.

“You old so and so,” Morgan said and then they wrestled until Mitch accidentally smashed his head into the leg of his sofa. 

Morgan yelled, “Concussion protocol,” and tried to hold a cold beer bottle to the back of Mitch’s head. 

“Stop hitting me with that,” Mitch said, trying to bat him away. “It’s hard glass.”

It exploded foam everywhere when Morgan opened it to drink it instead. 

“I’m never having you over again,” Mitch said. He was out of paper towel, so he tried to use the cardboard tube to absorb some of the spilled beer and that helped not at all. 

“You seem happier,” Morgan said. He was sitting on the couch watching Mitch clean and drinking what was left of the exploded beer. He had that little bit of a lisp when he said _seem_ , like the hint of a whistle through his missing front tooth. 

“I’m always happy,” Mitch said. 

“Sure you are,” Morgan said. “But if not, you can always talk to dear old dad.”

“Dad,” Mitch said, plaintively. “One of my teammates came over and he trashed my house and I don’t know how to make him leave.”

“Sounds like a tough one, son. You should probably go and get him another beer.”

When Morgan left, Mitch’s floor was sticky and he had gone like at least forty-five minutes without thinking of Auston. Luckily he’d bought all that cleaner at Canadian Tire. He used the cucumber scented bottle and one of his bathroom towels to wipe up the rest of the mess. Now his floor was acceptable to guests. Like if Auston came over, and what if they even just sat together, like really close to each other. Auston didn’t wear any cologne, which was smart, because basically any guy in the locker room who wore cologne smelled terrible (except Kadri, for some reason). Auston smelled pretty good, when he wasn’t in his hockey gear. His hair smelled nice after he came out of the shower. 

Mitch thought about that and then he thought about how unfortunate it was that none of his windows opened because of that stupid Toronto bylaw about not having windows that opened wide enough for babies to fall out of. Even though: _patios_. He didn’t have a patio. He didn’t have any access to the outdoors or else it would have been great to just wrench his brain out of his fool head and throw it out the window. 

He turned on his printer and took some photocopies of his hand instead. 

\--

Mitch had always thought of himself as aggressively bisexual, although Dylan said that only worked for a definition of aggressive that meant pathetically easy. Which was fair. Being available was a strategy that worked a lot. Or at least like two different times. 

It had thus far not worked with Auston, so, fuck it. Mitch was making the dreamboard. 

First, he looked up photos of pucks on google images and printed out like thirty different ones. Then he realized that a bunch of black circles wasn’t that inspirational, so he found a big picture of an empty net. He glued down the net and then he filled it up with pucks. He printed out a few pictures of cars to put around the edges. 

Then he started working on the middle. 

\--

They won a game and then they lost another one. They were so, so close to the wildcard spot. Auston absolutely refused to talk about it because, “What will that help?”

Like, nothing, Auston, but everyone else on earth still wanted to talk about it. 

They had a couple days back at home. Auston was doing the splits, basically, while Mitch rolled out his IT band on the foam tube. 

Morgan came over and sat down beside him. 

“Whatever you’re thinking, you should just go for it,” Morgan said. 

Mitch had specifically been thinking about how good Auston’s ass looked in his black leggings, but this time it was more in a weird normal way where he was trying to compare the differences in their exercise plans. He sure hoped his face looked as blank as he had tried to make it, because otherwise that was kind of an embarrassing way to get caught.

“What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Morgan asked. 

“I guess a sinkhole,” Mitch said. “If it was big enough. We’d lose the entire arena.”

Morgan gave him a look, a pointed knowing look like: _Obviously that would not be the worst thing that could happen, what if you had to spend an entire week with Steve Dangle?_

Mitch switched over to his other side.

“Look, just. Come over after practice,” he said. 

\--

Morgan came over, took one look at Mitch’s dreamboard, and then laughed so hard that it seemed like another tooth might just fall right out of his head.

Mitch scowled. 

He texted Connor: _Tell the oilers we’re making a trade_.

Connor texted back, _Like you for me????_

Mitch texted Dylan: _Tell Lucic he needs to stop letting them hit Connor in the head so much_. 

Dylan didn’t reply, but Connor sent back: _Well who did you mean then??_

Mitch: _I’m giving you Mo for free._

Connor sent back three thumbs ups.

Morgan was still laughing, but he wheezed out, “No, I love it. Marns, I love it.”

“Oh, get out,” Mitch said. 

When Morgan settled down, they played video games for a while, which was fine. And then, before he left, he said, “I’ll always be your father. But also I’m Matthews’ father. Oh, wait, so that would make you brothers, and --”

“Get the fuck out of my house,” Mitch said, closing the door in Morgan’s face. 

“I support you,” Morgan yelled from the hallway. 

Mitch leaned his head against his front door, and when it sounded like Morgan was finally gone, he banged his forehead against it. 

\--

Well, nothing good ever came from waiting. Or, like, some things did. But Mitch felt like he had been waiting long enough. 

“Come to my place after practice,” he said the next morning that he was driving Auston to the arena. 

“‘kay,” Auston said. He might have been asleep. Mitch felt irritated by his own affection. 

But that was how he ended up back at his own place with Mitch. His dreamboard was still sitting on the couch, because it was actually kind of huge and he obviously wasn’t going to hang it on the wall, but also he didn’t want it to get damaged. 

Auston noticed the dreamboard right away, because. Obviously. It was the most noticeable thing in the room. 

Mitch left him to look at it privately by pacing back and forth in front of the hall closet that kept his washer and dryer. He needed to do some laundry but now was _not the time_. He walked back into the main room. 

“Is that my face?” Auston asked. 

“Yeah.”

Mitch’s printer could only do 8.5x11 and he had wanted something larger, so he had cropped this one really big picture of Auston four different times to print on different pieces of paper and tape together. The problem was that he had cropped the picture using the photos app on his iphone, and each piece of Auston’s face was at a different scale. The left lower half of his face was way larger than it should have been.

“I’m looking rough, man. I guess this year has taken a toll.”

Mitch looked over at Auston sharply. He felt a hysterical giggle welling up and then it started and he couldn’t stop. He laughed for a really long time. His sides started to hurt. He dropped forward to rest his hands on his thighs and still he couldn’t stop laughing. 

Auston came up beside him, rested his big palm between Mitch’s shoulder blades. The weight of his hand was really grounding. Mitch finally took a deep breath. He could feel Auston’s touch like right into the bottom of his lungs. He breathed again. 

When he finally stood up straight again, Auston moved his hand to curl around the back of Mitch’s neck instead. 

“How much did you spend making this dreamboard?”

“Maybe like four hundred dollars,” Mitch said even though he had in fact spent a lot more than that. He stepped away from Auston’s hand, and then again so their bodies weren’t so close. It was a good distance to be able to put even _more_ distance between them. Just if he needed to. 

“Are you, like, in love with me?”

“ _No_ ,” Mitch said, horrified. “We’ve never even kissed.” He was really glad that he had already taken that first step back. 

“But you want to?” Auston asked. “Kiss.”

Mitch looked up at the ceiling and sighed. 

“Hey,” Auston said, softly. While Mitch was staring at the ceiling, he had taken a stealth step forward and just like that they were close enough to touch again. 

Mitch looked at the floor, and at the wall over Auston’s shoulder, and then finally he made himself lift his head to actually look Auston in the eye. 

Auston was already watching him, and when Mitch looked up, he smiled. His fingers brushed over Mitch’s arm and then his neck. He brushed his lips over one of Mitch’s cheeks, let his lips drag over until they were lined up with Mitch’s mouth, and then Mitch forgot to hold still and went in tongue first. 

Auston made a sound like he wanted to laugh, but he opened his mouth. He kissed Mitch exactly the way Mitch wanted to be kissed, really deep and wet, before pulling back in slow stages until they were kissing really sweetly, just these soft brushes of their lips. Really romantic shit, which Mitch had not been expecting from Auston. It was a nice surprise. 

“You want to kiss me too,” Mitch said.

Auston cupped Mitch’s face, like _so_ smoothly, Mitch was _done for here_. 

“Nah,” Auston said, before he ducked down to kiss Mitch again. 

“Do you want to lie down on the floor?” Mitch asked when they finally parted for breath.

“Or like maybe instead we could go to your bed?” Auston suggested. 

“Okay,” Mitch said. Taking the little break had not helped him catch his breath at all. He was facing away from the direction of the bedroom, so he let Auston walk them in the right direction and just focused on putting his hands all over Auston’s ass instead. 

“So you owe me twenty U.S. dollars,” Mitch said, with his hands tucked into the pockets of Auston’s very tight jeans. 

“It was a nice dreamboard, Marns,” Auston said. 

“Did you like the part with your face?” Mitch asked. Said face was very close to Mitch’s face, so he gave into the urge to, very gently, set his teeth into Auston’s jaw.

Auston laughed and batted him away, but not very far. “I liked that part the best.” Oh, look, they were in Mitch’s bedroom. He hit the bed and pulled Auston after him. 

“But,” Auston said, crawling up after Mitch, “I’m paying you in Canadian dollars.”

**Author's Note:**

> From The Very Secret Beta Notes of [Threeturn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/threeturn): _i just googled "crappy tire canada" and all the hits were for "canadian tire" did they really set an auto redirect from crappy tire to canadian tire? amazing._
> 
> I'm over [here on tumblr](http://disarmd.tumblr.com).


End file.
